


Golden Ratio

by curiouswarnings



Series: Decimal Increments [2]
Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Bonding, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Female Friendship, Gen, Intermission, Worldbuilding, just a lil bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-30 08:50:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21425491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiouswarnings/pseuds/curiouswarnings
Summary: The morning after Beetlejuice's departure, Barbara and Delia have A Moment.
Relationships: Adam Maitland/Barbara Maitland, Charles Deetz/Delia Deetz, Delia Deetz & Barbara Maitland
Series: Decimal Increments [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1523402
Comments: 12
Kudos: 173





	Golden Ratio

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! I actually had this about 50% written before I even posted Barbara 2.5, so it hasn't taken very long for me to finish. It was also originally only about 1k, but uh. It got bulked up fast once I started adding details, haha.
> 
> When I planned for Delia's crystals to be significant to the worldbuilding of this series this was something I made a note to write about straight away. Potentially I could have kept it for the next longer installment, but since I'm still planning that I thought I'd just post it on its own in the interim. 
> 
> This isn't a hugely eventful story, but I am setting a few things up here that we'll be coming back to later! Speaking of coming back later, my apologies for the lack of Beetleboy in this one. He's off doing...things. Which I will disclose at a later date. I am setting things up for Big Drama later, which I hope you'll all enjoy.
> 
> And last but not least, big shoutout to my buddy @patchkin for beta-ing for me <3

As Barbara had predicted Lydia was upset to find Beetlejuice gone when she awoke later that morning. Normally she stayed in bed for as long as possible, only getting up for school when she’d been woken by one of them several times, but that morning she was up practically at the crack of dawn, running to the guest room. Barbara winced as she heard her footsteps come to a halt upstairs, no doubt disappointed to find the room devoid of any demonic presence. It looked as if the consolation pancakes she'd just made would be coming in handy.

Lydia sulked through breakfast, stabbing her fork into her pancakes with vigour, no doubt pretending it was the demon's face.

“He couldn't have stayed for breakfast?” She muttered sullenly into the syrupy mush on her plate. “Not even to say 'hi'?”

Barbara ran a sympathetic hand over her hair, which was still unbrushed and messy from sleep.

“I think he needed some space,” she said diplomatically. In truth she didn't fully understand why he'd left. She didn't understand how his curse worked, and she wished he'd stuck around a little longer so she could find out.

“Well, I would at least have liked to hear his version of the story,” Lydia replied, spearing another soggy piece of pancake.

“What, mine wasn't good enough?” Barbara teased, knocking their elbows together gently. Lydia laughed, jostling her back before finishing off the last of her pancakes.

“Oh, no yours was fine. I just wanted to hear how much he'd play up the good bits- he might not be the most reliable narrator, but he's definitely an entertaining one.”

Barbara couldn't really disagree with that, having been subject to his ridiculous stories for the past two days. She was even starting to think she might miss hearing them.

They heard footsteps on the stairs, and moments later Charles walked briskly into the kitchen, made a beeline for the coffee machine- and stopped.

“Why is there a sword on the table?” he asked, sounding tired already.

“Oh- that's mine,” Barbara said, with a sheepish grin. “Beetlejuice left it for me.”

“He's gone?” Charles asked, sounding hopeful.

“Yeah, couldn't wait to get out of here apparently,” Lydia muttered darkly, inching her fingers towards the hilt of the sword. “Can I use it?” she asked, hopefully.

“No,” Charles and Barbara said in tandem.

Lydia only pouted a little as she stood to deposit her breakfast dishes in the sink. “You guys are such killjoys,” she said. “Dad, are you good to drop me off today?”

“You're going to school?” Charles asked, blinking in surprise. “I said you could have the day off, you know, after everything.”

“Yeah, but I forgot I had an important test today so,” Lydia shrugged, heading for the door. She paused before she left.“It's good to have you back Barbara- you too Adam,” she added, giving him a quick hug as he passed her coming into the kitchen, paper and pencils and tape measure in hand.

He hugged her back looking a little bewildered as she skipped out of the room, hurrying off to finish getting ready.

As Adam set about measuring the sword, Charles wrestled with the coffee maker as he did every morning. The clicking and whirring of Adam's tape measure as he pulled it in and out was a uniquely comforting sound to Barbara. She'd often sit and watch him work, or read while he worked, listening to the gentle lulling background noises while he worked.

Eventually Delia stumbled into the kitchen too, dropping bleary eyed into the seat next to Barbara. She'd forgotten to take her makeup off before going to bed. It hadn't survived the night in tact. Barbara debated pointing it out, but figured she would find out soon enough. Charles wordlessly set a cup of coffee in front of her, which she grasped for with groggy automatic movements, lifting it to her lips and taking a gulp. Delia wasn't a morning person- at least not until she had some caffeine in her system. The cup of coffee was soon followed by a sliced grapefruit- Delia always had fruit for breakfast because it was healthy and a good start to the day, but it was also usually liberally doused in sugar, which Barbara thought rather defeated the point.

“What's that you're reading Barbara?” Delia asked through her mouthful of over sweetened grapefruit.

“Something Beetlejuice left for us,” Barbara replied, tapping the papers. “He said we should probably put up some protection around the house so we don't get any more...unwanted visitors.” Adam put a hand on her knee, giving it a brief but comforting squeeze.

“What sort of 'protection'?” Charles asked shrewdly, narrowing his eyes over his own cup of coffee.

“I don't know, I can't really read his handwriting,” she said, wryly, holding his scrawl up for them to see.

“That's writing?” Charles asked incredulously. “It looks like a monkey wrote it. A drunk monkey. On a trampoline.”

“Are you sure we can trust this?” Adam asked, dubiously, leaning closer to peer at the papers. “I mean, this is Beetlejuice we're talking about.”

Barbara- hadn't really considered this, truth be told, but she had to admit that Adam had a point. This was something that was way _ , way _ out of their comfort zone. They could be doing anything when they put these things up, and they would have no idea about it.

But the alternative.

The alternative was that they might have a repeat performance of what happened two-days-one-week ago. The alternative was that she might lose Adam again. It was a possibility that didn't bear thinking about.

“We can,” she said, with more conviction than she really felt. “I mean, if he wanted to hurt us do you really think he'd go about it like this?” She asked, shaking the papers in her hand. “Doesn't seem like his style, really.”

Adam appeared to consider this, setting his pencil down. “I guess you're right,” he conceded. “He'd probably just have stuck around to make trouble in person, rather than leave us an instruction manual.”

“Well, this is wildly out of my area of expertise, so whatever you decide to do, I'll go along with,” Charles said as he rose from the table.

“Really?” Barbara asked, blinking at him. Despite the fact that Adam and Barbara still thought of the house as largely 'theirs', Charles had gradually slid into the position of 'de facto head of household' in the last few months. It took her by surprise that he placed that much trust in them.

“Whatever you feel will be best,” he said, leaning to kiss Delia goodbye before shrugging on his jacket for work and heading out the door, calling Lydia down as he went.

“So what kind of protection does it say we need?” Delia asked, after the front door had closed behind them. She leaned over, grapefruit forgotten as she turned her head to look at what Beetlejuice had left for them. “You know I have some sage if-”

Barbara shook her head. “It looks like he's left us some weird symbols or something,” she said, tapping the papers. “I'm just trying to figure out what exactly we're supposed to do with them.”

Delia wilted a little, but her smile pinned sadly in place like a butterfly on an entomologists board.

“You want to help me with them?” Barbara ventured, seeing the badly concealed disappointment on the other woman's face.

Delia perked up again immediately, like a marionette jerked by a particularly overenthusiastic puppeteer.

“I would love to!” She exclaimed, clapping her hands excitedly.

Barbara shuffled her seat closer to Delia's pushing the makeshift book between them. Adam was busying himself measuring wall space for the sword, moving first round the kitchen and then eventually out into the hall, fully engrossed in his task.

“What do you think that says?” Barbara asked, pointing to a particularly dense squiggle underneath one of the images.

Delia turned her head this way and that, squinting at the writing, and humming thoughtfully.

“Tasmania?” She hazarded. “ Why would we need to go to Tasmania- oh! Talisman! It says talisman!” She exclaimed, pointing at the offending word.

“I think you're right,” Barbara said. She picked up one of Adam's pencils from the table and made a small note beside the word, just in case they forgot later.

“So we need- a talisman-” she pressed a finger to one of the diagrams, “and a seal?” she slid her finger over to the diagram opposite. “Am I reading that right?”

“I think so,” Barbara said still scanning the pages. “Some of these look kinda complicated,” she mused. “Adam should be able to draw them though. He likes precise stuff like this. Thankfully Beetlejuice's drawing skills were a lot better than his penmanship, so the diagrams at least were easy to interpret.

The talisman and the seal appeared to complement each other in some ways, and both consisted of circles with various lines and shapes drawn in different configurations inside them.

“What else do we need? What's that say? Wood?” Delia tapped the word, which on closer inspection did appear say wood.

“Paint talisman and seal opposite each other on a wooden surface,” Barbara read, holding the papers out at arms length as she squinted at them.

“We could paint it in the attic,” Delia suggested. “That way nobody has to see it, but there's still plenty of space for us to work with.”

Barbara nodded in agreement, still trying to make out what the writing said.  “I think it says “works best painted on wood with a natural substance,” she paused. “Adam,” she called.

“Yes honey?” He said, popping his head back around the door, tape measure still in hand.

“Do we still have that box of paints from last year? Or any paints, actually,” she added. “We better just see what we have to work with first.”

“I'll go check,” he said, retreating back into the hall.

“We took a painting course last year,” Barbara explained. “Really in-depth stuff about like- traditional painting materials- we even made some of our own- I was thinking some of those might work best for this.”

“Yeah,” Delia said, smiling brightly. “Barbara you are so smart, I wouldn't have thought of that!”

Barbara laughed bashfully at the compliment. “Well, I just thought it made sense, you know?”

“How so?” Delia said, looking up from the diagram she'd been studying.

“Well, he was telling me that natural materials have all kinds of- oh! Wait, that reminds me!” She reached into her pocket, withdrawing the crystal that had been secreted away in there for the past few days. “Here,” she said, holding it out for Delia.

“I was wondering where that went!” Delia exclaimed taking the stone from her.

“Yeah, sorry. I forgot I had it, you know, with everything,” Barbara laughed sheepishly. “I had it on me when we went to rescue Adam,” she admitted, propping her head up on her hand and examining the papers once again.

“Don't worry about it,” Delia said, turning the little stone over in her hand. “If you forgot about it that means you were meant to have it,” she continued nodding to herself. “Jet has a lot of good properties, very good for protecting against harmful influences, I'm sure it must have helped.”

“Beetlejuice said that it had kind of- absorbed my energy or something? Because it's a natural substance; he said all the crystals had probably done the same, what with Adam and I in the house-” Barbara shrugged, turning to the next page. “He said that the scucca picked up the scent and that that was probably why it turned up here.”

She went to turn the next page and was startled when Delia slammed her hand down on it, the piece of jet clattering across the table top as it dropped from her hand. Barbara blinked, looking up at the other woman, surprised to see the aghast look on her face.

“What? What's wrong?”

Delia stared at her wide eyed for a moment, mouth turned down. “The crystals?  _ My _ crystals?”

“Oh. Oh!” Barbara exclaimed, realising what she was getting at. “No, Delia, it's-”

“Oh my god, is this my fault?” Delia said, staring unseeingly into Barbara's face. Her expression crumpled. “This is my fault!”

Barbara placed a hand over hers where it still rested on the papers.

“Delia, no. It's not anyone's fault. It just happened- sometimes- things just happen.”

Delia shook her head vigorously. “No! Things don't just happen!” She said with conviction. “If I hadn't bought all those stupid crystals none of this would have-”

“And if Adam and I hadn't bought this house we wouldn't have died,” Barbara said, a little more sharply than she'd intended. Delia looked at her, blinking a little tearfully. Barbara's face softened, squeezing the other woman's hand.

“You had no way of knowing Delia,” she went on softly. “None of us could have.”

Delia didn't look convinced. Her eyes were downcast, looking at the floor without really seeing it.

“I always tried to believe that there was a reason for these things,” she said after a moment. “But it seems like every time I feel like I'm finally at home something happens and everything falls apart- what reason is there for that?” She asked, pleading with an entity that Barbara wasn't sure was there.

“Nothing's falling apart Delia,” Barbara said, a little dismayed at how quickly Delia's mood had spiralled. “And hey-” she picked up the polished piece of jet again from where Delia had left it on the table. “If it wasn't for this we wouldn't have been able to get home.”

Delia wiped at an eye with the sleeve of her robe, smudging her already messy mascara in a sooty streak across her temple. “Really?” She asked a fragile note of hope in her voice as she stared balefully at the little black rock.

Barbara nodded. “Beetlejuice was supposed to bring us home when we found Adam- but then he got hurt, and the monster came back,” she swallowed thickly at the memory, still searingly fresh in her mind, despite feeling worlds away from their sunlit kitchen. She shook the memory off quickly. “I had no idea what to do, Adam was unconscious, Beetlejuice was out of commission, I didn't know how to get us home. But then I thought of all of you- how much I wanted to see you- and the crystal did the rest.”

She lifted Delia's hand, turning her palm up gently and depositing the stone inside.

“You saved us Delia,” she said smiling warmly.

Delia sniffed again, staring at Barbara with a slightly starstruck expression “Oh,” she said eventually. “I suppose- when you look at it like that, I did.” She tried a watery smile on for size, but it slid off her face quickly without anything to hold it in place.

“Maybe I should get rid of them,” she said, frowning at the crystal again.

“What?” Barbara asked, aghast. “No! Delia, you've worked so hard on that collection!”

As absurd as they might seem to many people, Delia took great pride in her beliefs. She picked out her crystals very carefully, taking great care to pick ones out that she felt were right. For all that she seemed to follow fads and drop them just as fast, her crystals were something she took very seriously. She never made a purchase lightly. She carried extras to hand out to people just in case she thought they might need them. She  _ loved _ her crystals.

“But if they're dangerous-”

“We're putting up the protection charms remember,” Barbara said, tapping the book. “And hey- if Adam and I can affect them, maybe we could learn how to use them for something. Maybe you can have super-charged ghost crystals! How many other people can claim that?”

That got a laugh out of her at least, and she wiped her eyes again, making an even bigger mess of her make-up.

“You're a good friend Barbara,” she said with a fragile smile. “We are friends right?” She added hastily.

“We're friends Delia.” Barbara said firmly, taking her hand again.

“Oh good,” Delia said with an uneasy laugh, free hand over her heart. “I just thought I should check.”

Adam chose that moment to re-emerge, carrying a battered box full of tubes and tubs and paintbrushes that probably hadn't been cleaned properly after their course had finished.

“OK, I found the paints, I think we're out of acrylics, but there's other stuff in here that should do just fine-uh-” he paused when he caught sight of Delia's even more smudged make up, eyes darting back and forth between them “What did I miss?”

“Oh, nothing,” Delia said, waving her hand, and then making grabby hands for the box he was holding. “C'mon, let's see those paints!”

In the end they find an area of the attic roof to paint the seal and the talisman on. Adam measures the diagrams Beetlejuice had left precisely, scaling them up to a decent size. He was in his element with things like this. Barbara sat on the old couch watching him, head propped up on her hands. She'd always liked to watch him work. He had so much concentration- Barbara had always found herself a little too easy to distract sometimes.

She watched as her husband floated delicately up to the ceiling (even dead, heights still made him nervous) and, taking his pencils and measuring equipment, carefully began replicated the designs.

“What kind of paint is this?” Delia asked, examining the tube in her hand as she stood by the couch.

“Tempera,” Barbara said. “Traditionally it's made of eggs- I figured that was plenty natural,” Barbara said with a shrug.

Delia nodded in agreement, setting the tube back in the box with the rest. Beetlejuice's instructions were sitting by them on the battered old coffee table, and she reached down to pick them up.

“You know,” she said, examining the seal that Adam was in the middle of reproducing. “Some of these symbols look awfully familiar, but I can't for the life of me remember where I've seen them.” She held the papers out at arms length, scrunching her nose up in thought, as she turned them about in her hands. “Oh well, I'm sure it'll come back to me if it's important,” she said eventually handing them back to Barbara.

“This is gonna take a while,” Adam said over his shoulder, still floating by the ceiling. “You might wanna find something more interesting to do.”

“Oh, I think this plenty interesting,” she said, making a show of looking him up and down, beaming mischievously and enjoying the way he turned pink when Delia giggled.

While Barbara would happily sit and watch Adam work, she didn't suppose that would be as interesting to Delia as it was to her, so she heaved herself up off the couch and headed for the stairs.

“C'mon,” she said to Delia. “We should see what else Beetlejuice put in here, I think I'm starting to get used to his handwriting.”

Aside from the designs that Adam was working on in the attic, there were a number of smaller patterns on the pages, more like inscriptions than the seal and talisman. Barbara flicked over them, coming to the final page.

“Oh, this one is so pretty!” Delia exclaimed, pointing to the geometric pattern in front of them.

It consisted of a circle, radiating out several points from the centre, like a star, interspersed with smaller spheres, all contained within another, larger circle.

“I think that says we should put it on the door?” Barbara said, squinting down at the writing.

“Looks like it,” Delia agreed as she leaned over to get a better look. “We won't be able to hide it there, but at least it'll look nice!”

“We'll need Adam again for this one,” Barbara said, turning back to the precious pages to look at the inscriptions instead. “Let's get these ones done first and we'll save that one for last.”

By mid morning they'd hidden a number of smaller symbols in various rooms of the house, deciphering Beetlejuice's atrocious handwriting as they went. They put inscriptions on all the windows and doors, Barbara floating up to write them out of sight across the lintel, and Delia writing them underneath the windowsills. Neither of them had any idea what language they were in, if indeed it was a language at all, but they didn't have the same precision as the other drawings, and were easy to copy freehand.

Once they were done with that Delia insisted on getting out her sage, and Barbara didn't protest. If it made her feel better who is she to deny her that? Especially after how upset she'd been earlier.

It occurred to Barbara then, that despite living together for months, she had still barely scratched the surface with Delia or Charles. It was understandable, she supposed; they were all adults with busy lives, and they had lived busy adult lives long before Barbara and Adam had met either of them. It took time to really know people, she thought to herself. Whether it was two days, or two months, or even longer. Though they got along well, it hadn't really been any of their choices to live together. It was just how things had worked out.

“Hey, Barbara?” Delia said, as she wafted the burning bundle through the air, blue smoke trailing behind it in delicate wisps.

“Hm?” Barbara said, pulled out of her reverie.

Delia turned to her and smile. “I really am glad to have you home.”

Barbara smiled back warmly.

“It's good to be home, Delia.”

And sometimes things worked out OK.

**Author's Note:**

> Catch me desperately googling different types of paints and stuff to figure out what they should use here lmao. Tbh I'm not sure if painting tempera onto your roof would work long term. It's not a medium I know a lot about and I probably wouldn't know it at all if I hadn't gone to a talk by a picture book illustrator that uses it while I was at uni. I think he actually made his own too, which was pretty cool.
> 
> The thing about Delia giving people crystals is based on something one of my mam's friends does. There's been times when she's literally just bought some the same day for herself but she'll give them away to her friends if she thinks they need them, it's really sweet.
> 
> The seal + talisman thing is loosely based on the ones found in The Greater Key of Solomon, which I was skim reading about in one of my books today. The ones on the windows and doors were inspired by early Hebrew amulet inscriptions form the same book. The one on the door will be explained at a later date ;)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
